The Who’s Pete Townshend has taken a jab at Rick Rubin, saying “somebody wants to sometimes slap” the producer over his inventive strategies.
Townshend’s remark got here throughout an look along with his spouse Rachel Fuller on the Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Man Pratt podcast.
Whereas discussing the thought of creativity, Townshend remarked (as transcribed by Final Guitar), “You see lots of stuff on YouTube and Instagram, individuals nagging you about the best way that it’s important to be inventive. Any person wants to sometimes slap Rick Rubin, as a result of, one minute he’s telling us that we have to do no matter we like, after which, alternatively, he’s telling us that we mustn’t do that, and we mustn’t try this.”
Mentioning Rubin appeared somewhat random, because the guitarist isn’t identified to have labored with the producer, who has helmed such iconic albums as Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ailing, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, and System of a Down’s Toxicity, amongst others. Nevertheless, the Who guitarist might have been referring to Rubin’s 2023 ebook, The Artistic Act: A Approach of Being, by which the producer claims that artwork is at its most “pure” when the artist creates it for oneself and never for an viewers.
The Who legend continued, “The ebook of guidelines for me is… I’ve dabbled with all of these strategies. I’ve carried full massive, recording studios on the highway with me generally, after which generally I’ve used little cassette machines. I’ve recorded in every kind of various methods. And if I fancy going right into a studio with an enormous orchestra, I’ve carried out that too. However what’s most fascinating is the paper. The paper, the {photograph}, the writing.”
Townshend isn’t the one musician to have criticized Rubin, as a number of artists who’ve labored straight with the producer have questioned his strategies.
Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, who labored with Rubin on the metallic band’s last album, 13, was extremely essential of the producer’s hands-off method, saying in a 2022 interview, “I nonetheless don’t know what he did [for that album].” Butler’s Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi additionally took a shot at Rubin, saying the one factor he discovered from him was “the best way to lie on the sofa with a mic in my hand and say ‘Subsequent!’”
Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor was much more harsh in his feedback, following Rubin’s work on the band’s 2004 LP Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), as soon as telling an viewers, “I respect what Rick Rubin has carried out. However the Rick Rubin of right now is a skinny shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He’s overrated, he’s overpaid, and I’ll by no means work with him once more so long as I fucking dwell.”
That each one stated, Townshend did have one thing optimistic to say about Rubin in the course of the aforementioned podcast, “As Rick Rubin so rightly says, and plenty of different pundits about creativity, it must be enjoyable. It has to it must be gratifying. It must be one thing that you simply like to do, and it additionally must be one thing that you simply like what you do. Nevertheless it doesn’t essentially imply that anyone else will prefer it.”
In different information, Townshend just lately stated that The Who plan to reconvene in 2025, telling the London Commonplace of himself and singer Roger Daltrey, “We’re each getting a bit creaky, however we will certainly do one thing subsequent 12 months.”
Try Pete Townshend’s feedback on Rick Rubin on the Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Man Pratt podcast under.